A Night I Couldn’t Be Honest - Chapter 2.4

A woman fleeing through a dark alley at midnight, one travel bag to her name.

The suspicious behavior made her circumstances obvious. Rozalia was disappointed that Azelin hadn’t asked for what she’d imagined, but she understood the intention and kept her word.

Even a windfall of money would have meant nothing if her father and brother tracked her down. And Azelin wasn’t ruthless enough to ask for her own family to be made to disappear.

What Azelin needed at that moment was simply the most secure and hidden place in the empire where no one could easily reach her. Rozalia’s palace was exactly that.

And so Azelin was taken in by Rozalia and given the position of lady-in-waiting through a special appointment, no rigorous testing or verification required, purely on the strength of the Princess’s favor. Which meant her duties were quite different from other ladies-in-waiting.

The special task Rozalia assigned Azelin was to use the magic ring gifted by the Emperor, take on Rozalia’s appearance, and in her place manage the Princess’s complicated and tiresome romantic entanglements, coordinating and neatly wrapping them up.

Posing as Rozalia, Azelin would exchange letters with the men waiting for the Princess’s choice, nurturing the relationship until the feeling had ripened enough that propriety and careful steps became unnecessary, at which point the real Rozalia would meet them.

That was how Rozalia enjoyed her romances freely, and when she grew bored, Azelin would step back in to cleanly extinguish the men’s feelings and end things with appropriate compensation.

It was an arrangement that worked smoothly until now.

“This time it’s a trip. About a week. There’s one insufferable suitor who’s been annoying me for years, I’m going to put a final end to it this time.”

Rozalia, who had always been impressed by Azelin’s clean, efficient work, naturally assumed Azelin was an expert at romance, and without much concern, handed over what was evidently a somewhat difficult and hard-to-handle suitor.

“He’s a bit unsettling, but with your skills you’ll be fine.”

Azelin could neither laugh nor cry, as she had no choice but to follow an order from Rozalia.

And the result of that was exactly this.

“I never imagined I’d be walking down a street like this with you.”

The second day with the Marquis.

“Are you tired from all the walking?”

“…I’m a little tired of the Marquis following me everywhere, to be honest.”

“How cold.”

No matter how flatly Azelin answered, the Marquis smiled with wry acceptance, never once scowling. That smile caused an inescapable sense of guilt to build up in Azelin’s heart gradually.

Unlike the ornate garden of their first meeting, the two of them were now walking side by side down a city boulevard, dressed plainly enough that it was unbecoming of their status.

The knights guarding them moved like shadows, staying out of sight, and after a while Azelin stopped thinking about them at all.

“If you are tired, you could go back whenever you want, Marquis. I’m more comfortable on my own.”

“Who goes on a date alone?”

“D-date? This was a date?”

Azelin had been congratulating herself on playing Rozalia tolerably well, and then the single word ‘date’ made her tongue catch in her teeth. She stammered, and the ‘this-isn’t-right’ regret came after she’d already made herself look ridiculous.

He watched her flushed face and smiled warmly. She knew that smile wasn’t meant for her, but her heart still lurched at how lovely it was.

“Every now and then, sneaking around like this for a date isn’t bad either. In moments like this, you’re exactly the same as you always were.”

He laughed like a child, open and guileless, and took her hand naturally, closing the distance. He bent his head close to her ear so no one around them would hear, and Azelin’s whole body went rigid.

“You used to always complain that the Imperial Palace was dull and that you wanted to go out, didn’t you?”

“You remember everything, even the most trivial things.”

His breath against her ear was warm and soft as his voice. The warmth seemed to be contagious, making the tips of her ears burn.

Feeling the hairs on her neck stand, Azelin turned her head sharply away, making a show of disliking it.

Is this just how things are when you’ve known someone from childhood?

Having lost all her old connections after her family’s fall, Azelin had no idea what normal distance looked like between people who’d grown up together. That was part of why the Marquis, who closed the gap whenever he felt like it, kept throwing her off.

The Princess detested him, reacting with horror at the mere thought of him. The Marquis’s attitude, however, was the exact opposite. He acted with an excessive lack of restraint, as if they were the closest of friends. Like the hand that had caught hers now and wasn’t letting go, gripping hers tightly.

‘If you two were this close, you could have told me a little more about him!’